


YOU’RE A 8===> or Religions of Profane Antiquity

by leslielol



Category: Justified
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Literature, Past Abuse, Season/Series 02, Wilderness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-31
Updated: 2016-03-31
Packaged: 2018-05-30 06:12:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6412213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leslielol/pseuds/leslielol
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While hunting a fugitive through Harlan County, Raylan and Tim happen upon a familiar place Raylan hasn't seen in over two decades. </p><p>It hasn't gone undisturbed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	YOU’RE A 8===> or Religions of Profane Antiquity

**Author's Note:**

> So, I started this Actual Years Ago, and never quite liked it. In the spirit of getting through some writers block and just finishing _something,_ here it is. I hope it's enjoyable!

Tim hears a single shot and follows the soft echoes. They hug the blue hills, soft and drawn like a drumbeat, and if Tim didn’t know gunshots better than any other language, he’d start to wonder if he’d actually heard more than just the one. 

But he knows gunshots and he knows hills, so he runs after it, low like he's been taught, his feet heavy in boots and the soaked bottoms of his jeans. He hopes for a clean capture, but readies for a bloody shoot-out.

The evidence bears itself out when Tim comes across the body. Barnabas Edwards-- _local boy_ \--has set himself up nice in the company of a tree and a great, seemingly out of place boulder. He still smells of sweat from the chase, and his cheeks are red from sucking in lungfuls of chilly air. Tim figures his own face is a near-match. 

Only difference as far as Tim can see is, there's blood and bits of shattered teeth spilling from Edwards' slackened mouth, where he last tasted the icy barrel of a stolen pistol. Tim imagines it ran like a river, first, and now it's little more than a trickle. 

Tim shouts at the dead body because he's been fooled before. Never for long and never for good, but it’s not something he’s in a habit of falling into. 

The exit wound out the back of his head is a neat trick, Tim thinks. There's black blood and soft brain matter smeared across the rock. Tim gets two fingers in it before he's sure. 

Crouching low, Tim dutifully--if uselessly--checks for a pulse, and although the body’s still warm there’s nothing stirring inside. The order was kill or capture, but in this line of work--or so Tim is just coming to learn--there’s greater satisfaction in the latter option. He sighs and figures, at his going rate, he’d have caught up to Edwards in ten minutes, tops. 

And maybe he’d be dead by Tim’s hand, anyway, but that’s hardly the point. 

Tim pats Edwards on the knee, asks him to sit tight. 

He stands but doesn’t wander far from his prize. It’s not like his legs need the workout. He’s been on his feet all day, all night, covering ground and splitting off from his fellow Marshals so as to do so more effectively. It’s worked out for him--clearly--on one front, but his attempt to radio it in is thwarted by the hills. Tim gets nothing but the crackle of static in his ear--the first thing he’s heard in hours that isn’t his own breath. In a voice stripped raw by the cold air, he repeats his message over a few different frequencies, gets nothing back, and in a last-ditch attempt tries his cell. He’s got one fading bar, and tests his luck.

The first two calls to Art and the office are dropped. 

Tim draws his head back, sighs again because no one is around--really--to see him being petulant. It is, he believes, an expression of his truest self. 

Above him, the sky spreads out in a dark, dull blue. It colors everything in sight, and there’s nowhere that a glimmer of morning breaks through. It feels oppressive, to an extent, and Tim feels like it is somehow to blame for the poor radio reception. 

Tim takes stock of where he is and how he’s come. He’d been in the woods since late last night, broke from the search party around 3:00am. He crossed four fields of knee-high grass bitten with frost since then, split only by a sorry fence that began and ended in the middle of nowhere. Just sticks, their existence gifted by the grace of God or negligent property lines--both miracles in a place so fraught with clan claims and history. 

Tim's _someplace,_ surely, but there’s no one around to ask. 

Worse than a lack of living company, there's nothing in the way of high ground. Hills crest in the distance: great, yawning spells of earth and rock. It’d be another couple of hours out of his way to make it to the top of one and back, and even then he’s not guaranteed anyone hearing his voice, answering his call. 

Tim looks closer to home. To his right, the tree is rot to hell, and Tim sees a broken bone or two in his near future if he so much as attempts to climb it. He sets his sights on the rock instead, which still strikes Tim as so out of place that he circles it, first, casing the thing. It’s on his second time around that he spies something of note. Down near the sodden earth, carved deep into the stone such that it will still be there long after Tim and everything he knows and loves is dead and gone, are the immortal words: “YOU'RE A” just above a crude etching of a dick. 

Tim cannot find the energy to feel appropriately scandalized. 

“Rude,” he says, to no one. To Barnabas Edwards. 

He scales the rock, and because height isn't on his side Tim gets a lift from the shoulder of his lifeless companion. 

The radio is all static, but on his cell Tim gets one bar, then two. He stands on his toes, puts his phone to speaker, and _still_ has to hold it well above his head before his efforts are met with just a shred of reward. 

“Found him,” Tim half-shouts upwards when the call connects and he gets Raylan Givens’ voice on the line. 

“Anything else you’d care to add?” 

Raylan knows exactly what to ask after; Tim would be on the radio making this announcement if it was a clean get. 

“He’s dead,” Tim confirms. “Ate a bullet. Not one of mine.”

“Packed his own lunch, then. Alright.” Tim imagines Raylan’s taking extra time with this conversation because he’s holed away on a hill somewhere, binoculars fit between his hat and a smirk, watching Tim make a fool of himself. “Where are you?”

From his perch, Tim looks around. There’s not so much as a road or a structure in sight--just hills spilled out every which way. On foot, he doesn’t so readily recall his passage over them. Adrenaline pumping through his veins like it does during a chase, Tim figures he’d have sooner run through them, and come away with bits of earth between his teeth. The same burning feeling in his chest helped him scale mountains, once upon a time.

“Out of radio range, else I’d have called this in. Uh, by a tree.” Tim can hardly comprehend his own useless efforts. “A tree and a rock.” 

He's not surprised when Raylan gets short with him real quick; it’s been a long couple of days for everyone involved, and Raylan has the added ire of not being the one to find their guy. “Oh _fantastic,_ Tim. I know just the tree and just the rock.”

Tim rolls his eyes, and adds because he can’t very well call Raylan a dick at this juncture, not when he still needs his cooperation: “Rock’s got a cock and balls carved on it.”

The subsequent silence is so profound that Tim thinks he’s surely lost the call. But then Raylan gives a soft little whine of a laugh, something so unlike his manifestation of this _standoffish, chaotic cool being_ that it must be genuine. 

“Well, shit,” Raylan says. “I do know that rock. Sit tight.”

He hangs up, leaving Tim without so much as an ETA, or even a promise to radio word to the rest of the search team. Tim doesn’t even have solid confirmation that when Raylan does meet him, they won’t just be two dumbasses staring at a crude drawing, and debating whether or not it suggests intelligent life in Harlan County. 

It’s both too late and too early to think that far down the line. Tim’s done all that he can do, aside from waiting, and for his reward his body lets him feel every last hour of this shitshow of a manhunt. He comes down from his tip-toes, then sinks further to his ass. He kicks out his legs and settles there. 

Everything is touched with a dull blue light, including the body of Barnabas Edwards. From this angle above him, Tim can clearly see the gaping wound at the back of the man’s head--see well into it, even. His thinning hair clears a path. 

It’s a fairly aggressive campaign against male-pattern baldness. 

Tim pulls off his cap and draws a hand through his own hair, dampening it with sweat from his brow. It’s learned behavior, a subtle nod to what he’s been taught to do when facing off against an enemy: draw distinctions. Living, dead, thick hair, thinning. It all has a place.

Mist spills over the field he crossed and Tim takes his eyes off the body a moment to appreciate where he’s at. It looks different than it did coming in, but Tim supposes that’s normal, being at the center of it now. The hills are blanketed by a dense spread of trees that hug every crest and disappear into every fold. The dusting of frost colors them a shade lighter--teal where, in this light, the grass was surely blue. There was talk of snow over the past week as a cold front moved in from the Great Lakes, but none has yet materialized. Even with the chill, there is something sweaty-wet about the hills. Something that breathes hot.

There are horrors lurking there, Tim thinks, not because the darkened landscape promotes it, but because of who he has sat at the bottom of this rock. A man--a criminal, a fugitive, _a murderer_ \--who saw those hills and thought he belonged.

More is still out there, lying in wait. Tim’s mind is hardwired to believe it. 

Kentucky’s not so different from Arkansas, where Tim grew up. He doesn’t necessarily long for the particulars, there, but it’s nice to see something he feels he can know. A wilderness bit into by roads and industry, where tornadoes and flash-flooding lash out to reclaim what was never man’s to take. Tim's been itching for somewhere that looks like Afghanistan--a place he’s put in almost as many years as Arkansas--but hasn’t found it, yet. 

He’s brought back to reality, the weight at his hips holding as a strong reminder: on one side, there’s his holstered weapon. On the other, a heavy flashlight that got a lot more use some hours ago, when darkness dropped across Tim’s line of sight like a brick wall. Tim still thinks it’s a joke law enforcement is out here with torches, not night-vision equipment. He didn't say anything to start and won't do so, after. He's not one to invite that kind of comparison. 

And then, sat a little higher than the rest, there’s the radio, which hasn’t been of any fucking use at all. 

Tim scoots to a slanting side of the rock and drops to the ground from it. It's a bit of a jump and Tim feels it in his knees, grimaces. He sits beside Barnabas Edwards for a time, and it never once crosses his mind that he needn’t. 

Tim’s glad for his oversized slicker with the Marshal logo down the arm. It’s nothing in the way of stealth--matching hat included--but makes for dry seating on earth that’s soaked with morning dew, finished off with frost. Tim runs his hands over the grass to clean himself of the smear of blood he picked up during the initial inspection of his fugitive. The blotch runs pink before disappearing completely. 

There are a few odd wildflowers sprung up. Late for the season, Tim thinks. Now that he’s not moving, he feels a definite chill, the likes of which has haunted these hills for the better part of the month. But the plants are thick-stemmed and small bulbed--hardy, if not very pretty. They look a delicate pale blue, but for Tim’s money they’re white as snow. 

He draws in a breath, but all he gets is the taste and smell of the shot Barnabas Edwards took. It’s thick and the cool, wet air seems to give it new life. 

Tim shrugs off his jacket completely, trading warmth for a little respite. He spreads it open on the ground and lies back. He folds his arms behind his head, providing the cushion of intertwined fingers and laid-flat palms. It feels like clouds in heaven, for as much as he’s used to sleeping sideways on the hard ground, an arm heavy over his eyes to block out the sun. 

_There’s no light here,_ Tim thinks as he looks up at the alien blue sky. There’s not a streak of cloud in it, not a variance in color. It looks flat, empty like the bottom of a cardboard moving box. Tim feels unsettled being the only one under it. 

He glances at Edwards. Not the _only_ one.

He feels like a transplant, which he is, but it’s still a strange fact to happen upon so late in life. It’s been a long time since Tim felt like he didn’t belong.

Not wanting to soak the backs of his jeans, Tim keeps his knees bent. He supposes he could curl up--he’s spent any number of nights in tight places--but the thought conjures up notions of a longer wait than Tim is willing to allow. He imagines, too, how it would play. Stolen moments of comfort never look good on a man, but Tim’s been told his ability to sleep like a baby in circumstances such as these was particularly off-putting.

Despite his awkward positioning and grating thoughts, sleep overtakes him quickly, and Tim doesn’t have to concern himself with appearances for very long. 

For all his hard work, Tim is gifted broken visions of Afghanistan. 

It’s none of the rough stuff, which seems to creep up and claw its way through Tim's subconscious when he is feeling at ease with the world around him. The ruined bodies of his friends and the waste they laid unto others come as a stark reminder that he’s _not,_ and nor should he be. Now, Tim dreams of an EVAC that nearly went belly-up when the helo pilot clipped the side of a mountain trying to skirt mortar fire. The images shift to a year prior, his time spent face-down on a cot in a medical outpost, dropped flat by a sinus infection during his second tour. He sees blurry stripes of pink-and-white bedsheets. He remembers wondering for _days on end_ where it was the United States Army got those sheets. And if he’d had any lofty notions about _winning_ shit, about any facet of the war itself, they’d left him during that awful spell of sickness and delirium. They’d seeped into those childrens’ sheets along with his sweat, blood, and whatever other bodily fluids jumped ship during those two weeks in August, somewhere in the heart of Kandahar. 

Raylan is still some ways away when Tim stirs, finds wakefulness like a bullet in his side, sharp and fast and unwanted. His hand finds his sidearm and he tightens his grip instinctively, even before fully opening his eyes. Raylan's close enough that he can figure Tim's been sleeping, but not so near that he can see the drool on his lip before Tim wipes it away. He parlays the gesture into a glance at his watch to confirm the half hour he knows he’s lost. It’s still dark, and if Tim didn’t know any better, he wouldn’t have thought a second had passed. 

Cold sweat cuts across his brow, too. A token of where his dreams had taken him. Tim doesn’t get to it fast enough, so it stays. It cools quick and meets him like a headache. 

From the direction Raylan approaches, Tim guesses he’s come through the wooded hills to the south. It means Raylan saw Tim before the body, and was purposefully keeping his gait quiet. 

“You take a nap?” Raylan asks once he halves the space between them. 

“He wasn’t going nowhere,” Tim insists, and even to his own ears he sounds defensive. Raylan raises his eyebrows, and Tim realizes his mistake. He still hasn’t gotten the hang of the innocent question; he’s not used to being asked shit unless he’s fucked up. He stands in a hurry so that Raylan doesn't get the opportunity to loom over him. 

“You won’t be hearing that vitamin-rich bullshit from me,” Raylan says. It's a clunky message said only for Tim's benefit. “I’ll nap with ‘em still kickin’ around in the trunk.”

“Glad for your support,” Tim drawls. “You radio it in?”

“Funny thing about that,” Raylan starts, and his light tone only serves to bolster Tim’s impatience. “You ain’t out of range. Some dipshit Trooper fucked up the frequency. Got ahold of Art, though.” 

Raylan kicks the toe of his boot against the earth, then pivots ‘round, starts to wander. “Too out of the way to bring in a vehicle. We’re in for a couple hour’s wait but they’re sending your helicopter, so.” Raylan turns so Tim sees him smiling, makes sure he knows the trade-off is well worth it.

Tim drops to a crouch and shakes the dead fugitive’s leg. “You hear that? You get to ride in a helicopter!” He twists his voice into something harried and wild, an overestimation of Raylan's own excitement.

Raylan clicks his tongue, and while his expression carries only amusement, it's a short leap to annoyance. "How the hell did you wrangle that, huh? The helicopter."

It's only of interest because Tim didn't issue a formal request, and the thing isn't _strictly_ arriving by way of a fellow law enforcement--department, individual, or otherwise. This addition to their search was born of an offhand comment of Art's, followed by a shrug from Tim, and a text. Tim shrugged again, now. "I know a guy."

"A guy with a helicopter." 

"He had to bring something to the table. Me and my vivacious personality don't come cheap." 

“People are just chomping at the bit to be your friend.”

It sounds like an insult, and Tim doesn't know if _that's_ earned. He likes to think he knows Raylan well enough. After following his trail of bullshit clear across the state of Kentucky, Tim’s got a scent for it. But he doesn’t think Raylan can say the same for him.

At the very least, outright calling him unsociable is a little premature. 

“Yeah,” Tim says, drawing it out, "That's the thing about having standards. I don't gotta consort with every hillbilly Nazi asshole just 'cause we were BFF’s back in the day, shared a cubby in kindergarten." 

“Boyd ain't really a Nazi,” Raylan says, and Tim thinks it’s interesting that Raylan would correct him on that point, and not the designation of Boyd as Raylan’s best friend. 

Tim claps at his arm, hitting the place both he and Raylan know Boyd sports some unfortunate ink. “That ain't really a swastika he's got, then?”

“He's a lowlife and a con man. May have always been a preacher, though.”

As Tim understands it, that’s some kind of compliment up in these hills. Boyd has a big head, and it isn't just on account of all that hair. He's likely been told since infancy that he has a way with the good word. _A born preacher._ Tim can only think of a handful of worse things to do to a child than to fill him with a self-aggrandizing sense of worth and dominion. 

Raylan adjusts his hat. “And you’re sorely mistaken if you think I’d ever _share_ a cubby.” 

Tim wants to laugh, to enjoy the vision Raylan's given him of these two savage men as mere children, squabbling over territory on the reading circle. He even parts his lips in anticipation of a chuckle, a grin, a guffaw-- _something._

He's let down again. Too slow. 

Tim's left his Marshal's jacket on the ground, but with his own, a long-sleeved shirt, and bulletproof vest he's warm enough. It's only his coloring that betrays him, takes the biggest hit. Tim guesses he looks miserable: pinched red and shocked white. From the tip of his nose and down to his bottom lip, he's sure, bears the worst of it. It's as though he's been smacked across the face with the full force of winter, when only a breath of it coats the ground. 

Like accusations of misconduct and professional inquiries, the cold doesn't seem to make an impression on Raylan. Maybe he’s wearing his hat a little tighter around the ears, turned his collar up against the chill. 

Tim squints into the blue darkness that surrounds them, and hopes for it to let up soon. It's no good for the fellas arriving by helicopter to see by, and Tim doesn't think his buddy sprang for night vision optics for his systems. He makes fists of his hands and hides them in his pockets, then swings idly around. 

It's too cold to smell like anything. Considering the company made of Barnabas Edwards, that's no small fortune. 

“So you know this place, huh?”

“I know this place,” Raylan confirms in his typically vague and self-referential manner. He does that, sometimes. Looks over a face or an area like it’s speaking to him in ways his colleagues can't even hope to understand.

Tim sighs outright. The natural follow-up question is not one he thinks he ought to ask after, but knows he'll wait a lifetime if he doesn't: “What’d you do out here? Besides your budding artistic ventures.”

“That ain’t mine,” Raylan objects, a thumb jerked towards the rock. He does look around, however, and the softness on his face betrays a warm familiarity. Tim reads it easily: this is a dear place, an important place, but not one Raylan foresaw himself returning to, ever. And in that respect, it is dreaded. 

Raylan answers, “Read, mostly.”

Tim surveys the area again, draws up a mental map of Harlan County and logs the exceptional distance this valley is from Raylan's property. He supposes, on second thought, that the elementary and high schools are decidedly closer. “Long way to go.”

“Farthest I could get on foot.”

“What’d you read?” 

Raylan gives a noncommittal shrug. “Whatever.”

It's clear Raylan doesn't really want to talk, but Tim doesn't take it personally. This conversation is like pulling teeth, yet it's about all Tim can do to keep sane and steer his mind away from what he really wants to do: take up his gun and pump his fugitive full of holes, like he was meant to. It doesn't help that they're stood facing one another, opposing forces in the battle between company and quiet. 

Tim’s hands are at his hips, but he lets one fly to indicate Barnabas Edwards. "I only ask ‘cause the conversation here's been pretty slim.”

That gets him a smile. A real one, even, which is odd. The break of lips and sliver of teeth is, itself, so full of Raylan's obvious amusement that Tim wants to think he's not meant to see it. Raylan doesn’t bother smothering the expression when he asks, "You don't relate to people naturally, do you?"

Tim frowns. "What the hell do you mean?"

Suddenly, Raylan laughs. There's nothing sweet in the sound; it’s a cough caught in an updraft. 

"You really interested in what I got up to out here, back when I was half your age, and _still_ taller than you?" Raylan doesn't wait for Tim's answer before plucking the man's jacket from the earth, fitting his arm part-way down one sleeve and approaching the tree. There, he disappears his arm down one of the rotted-out knots, feels around the tree's middle. It's a tight squeeze--this unholy gutting--but Raylan gets an elbow in, easy. 

He pulls from the tree's insides a wet glob of leaves and a thick rope, attached to which is a great bundle of plastic. A kind of tarp, heavy in material, like what gets crumpled underfoot at a construction site.

 _From the mines,_ Tim figures. He's too dumbstruck by Raylan just _taking_ and _soiling_ his jacket that he says nothing, and only watches for an outcome as beguiling as the initial act. 

The sleeve comes back wet and filthy, which Tim doesn't appreciate, but the uncovered goods have his interest. Raylan brushes away the leaves and holds the bundle by the rope that's knotted around the whole package. He peels away the plastic along well-worn folds, like he's done this countless times before. The reveal is a simple one: a neat stack of books, a literal answer to Tim's question: _“What’d you read?”_

Tim reels back, absurdly pleased with this bizarre showing. Moreso, he believes, than if it had been some grizzly prize. Tim's bloodlust only runs along particular veins; it's not a free-for-all. 

"This is the realest Nancy Drew shit I've ever seen," he says. "Literally, why I got into this business."

Raylan handles his collection with care. "If you wanted to be Nancy Drew, I think you're in the wrong line of work." 

"I wanted to be a Depression-era, weirdly affluent teenage girl. This here is a compromise."

"You do have those purdy lashes." 

It's an armful Raylan's got, and somehow they end up with their backs against the rock, on Tim's jacket, and sat beside a dead man. There's no invitation on Tim's part--no refusal, either. But he has to throw a wrench in the seamlessness of their movements, the thoughtless collaboration, or risk giving the impression of compliance. 

"Save room for Jesus, now.” Tim’s jacket, once spacious, is now snug seating for two. He feels Raylan’s side flush against his, and it strikes him first and foremost as needlessly intimate. From there, it rolls slowly towards _intrusive._

Raylan, insistent on having both a bulk of the jacket’s middle _and_ the arm he hadn’t put down a sopping wet tree trunk, objects: “I’m halfway on the grass as it is.”

“So sit on your coat.” 

“Tim,” Raylan says it like he wants to call his colleague _son,_ and they’re both lucky he doesn’t. “This is a nice coat.” 

Tim smirks; the long, dark wool number, curling against Raylan’s sides when the wind takes a shot at him? It really is. 

Raylan kicks his legs out. His boots sit nicely in a smattering of tall flower buds. He crushes a few stems, others bend back to life. Tim keeps his knees bent and digs his heels into the soft earth. He's as close to Edwards as he is to Raylan--which is to say, quite close. 

And again, he doesn’t need to be. 

Tim just returned the jacket to where it had been; he could ask--very reasonably--to move it to Raylan’s left, put a little space between himself and a dead man. But it’s a thing, a request, that Tim can’t so much as draw the necessary air into his lungs to voice. 

It’s patently _stupid,_ but Tim doesn’t want to look weak, asking after some other comfort. Moments after he’d awoken from a nap, no less. 

So he doesn’t say anything, and ignores the sidelong look Raylan serves him. He retrieves the flashlight from his belt, clicks it on and leans it against the rock. They don't require direct light for this exercise, just enough to bleed through the darkness.

Raylan situates the books to his left rather than between himself and Tim; this is his show to run, and he won't suffer Tim's impatience. 

"Let's see what we got here..."

Top of the pile is a tattered, waterlogged copy of _The Outsiders._ The book is literally falling apart, greying and spotted with a mold that, when touched, gasps out a spore-ridden breath. It’s nostalgia performance art. Tim sets his elbow on his knee, makes a fist with his hand, and leans purposefully against it. 

"This is going great." 

The second piece of untouched Harlan history is a Playboy magazine. Whatever illusions Raylan might have about his singular existence, there are a few things he has in common with the rest of humanity. Like every other American boy, he got ahold of porn. Likewise, he knew to hide it. 

Although warped and water-stained like its partner, the magazine is still intact. The pages turn and are, at their stapled centers, crisp and whole. It’s a delicate treasure that Raylan keeps out of Tim's reach. 

"When you're older," he says with a wink. 

“I could live a thousand years, and I’d still not want to handle something you’ve fertilized,” Tim shoots back, then pitches forward and snatches up the next book from the pile before Raylan gets to it. It’s a trashy romance novel, paperback, likely passed among the women in Harlan with a knowing nod before it got to Raylan’s mother or aunt, where Raylan absconded with it, thusly. 

“When I’m dead,” Tim intones, and goes about flipping through the book, noting the dog-eared pages and places where the spine is very nearly coming apart. Fluttering hearts and throbbing members abound. Unimpressed, Tim returns the book to Raylan’s care.

Raylan thumbs through the pages like he suspects Tim’s upset something within them. “You know, it was really quite touching.”

“I bet it touched a lot of things.” Tim says, and serves Raylan a look as if to ask, _You really read this garbage?_

Raylan doesn’t accept that--the idea that Tim could not grasp why a man--in his boyhood--would have something like this in his possession. Every woman Raylan knew growing up had hid some glossy-covered tome or another under her arm when caught upon unexpectedly. And every mother had a young son eager to know what all the whispering was about, which meant he heard about it secondhand from another boy, or he investigated things on his own. 

Books like these smelled of pit-sweat and something else.

“Your mom never read any of these? Trade them with the girls after church, filthy pages burning a hole in her purse while the preacher talked of hellfire and brimstone?”

Raylan asks not because he's so interested, but because he's looking for the spark of recognition to cross Tim's face. None comes.

Tim shakes his head, honestly thinking his mother probably didn’t want any more than what she got on that front. 

“Nope,” he says, thinking on it some. He’s almost sure. He went to church often, growing up. Learned to be quiet there, learned to listen. Learned to smell bullshit not just from the first pew, but from a mile out. He doesn’t think there was ever anything insincere about it for his mother, who wore her same, single nice outfit every Sunday to services. And when she didn't let his head drop exhausted into her lap, Tim's mother held his hand the entire time. 

She'd told him, _"It can sometimes get scary."_

Hot and quiet and tempered and learned. In his more introspective moments as a sniper--that is, delirious with dehydration and heatstroke--Tim thought a lot about how he must have been destined for only this.

“Used to read to me from the Bible, though.” The thought jumps forth as Tim loses himself thinking of intersecting memories of books and his mother. “Or maybe she just knew the stories. Huh.”

“You sound surprised.”

“I don’t think about her much,” Tim says. Not quite a lie, but only just. He feels a yawn threaten his composure, so he speaks through it: “She died. Real young. Like, you ever seen _The Tudors?_ Child-bride young.”

It has the added effect of making him sound bored, which strangles his comments, twists them into something unnatural. His mother--and her untimely death in a car accident--is a non-issue for Tim at this stage in his life, but it doesn't _bore him._

“Sorry.” Raylan’s response is wholly automatic, and Tim nearly adds to it with his own apology. He stops short, waves a hand; no harm done, no offense taken, and no more questions, please.

Tim offers a wry grin, says, “What, you don’t get Showtime?” 

But Raylan's curious, now. Clunky conversation aside, he doesn't accept Tim's dismissal at face value. He doubles down, saying, "I loved my momma, and she always tried to protect me. It was my Aunt Helen, though, who saw that through. Gave me stolen money and sent me away from here."

Tim raises a hand, indicating Barnabas Edwards and the dark hills he thought he could disappear to. 

"Away from all this?" he jokes, but his tone is bone-dry and disengaged. This is this kind of thing that rattles him. Bastard fathers, Tim can speak to, can match bitter tale for bitter tale. After a couple drinks, there's nothing he likes more. But to the women in his life and their indelible influence, Tim gets tongue-tied.

There's the first hurdle: his own mother's nonexistence, the dull gray void where she ought to be, the emptiness in his childhood home that crowded all the places she never occupied. There was the church, but a few false starts in recent years convinced Tim that he wouldn't find her there. Without practice comes the second jump, the one he inevitably trips over: anything short of a mother feels too impersonal. To tell of a school librarian or elderly neighbor gives the impression he’s grasping. And in the space between accessing a simple appreciation akin to Raylan’s, and then coming up short, is a story. 

Tim, who doesn’t want that story known before he has the chance to intentionally tell it, says nothing. He’d rather condemn the conversation to death than test his luck wading through the past with a man who so knows the terrain that he is _literally_ walking his old haunts. Tim turns his focus on Raylan, who really has something to answer for, here, having pulled a teenage treasure trove from the knot in a tree, like a goddamn _Boo Radley._

The books are all layered with an additional strip of plastic. It's a packing method that speaks to a genuine care for the items, and Raylan's deft hands on them tells of frequent visits. 

Under the trashy romance novel, Raylan uncovers a small cache of comic books. “Here,” he says, smirking because it’s no secret Tim’s interest is piqued. “Something more your speed.” 

Tim leans in and gladly takes the brightly-colored comics. _"Finally."_

He flips through one, then passes it along to the lap of Barnabas Edwards, like he is as much a part of this little powwow as either Tim or Raylan. 

“They’re all _Superman,"_ Tim complains. 

“I liked _Superman.”_

"Elitist." 

“It’s an immigrant story.”

“Excuse me, elitist with a heart of gold.”

The Western that follows seems compulsory. Tim near about passes over it without a second thought before something strikes him about the water-stained cover. The colors are still bright, despite the age and their holed-away existence. There's orange pressed firm against blue, earth and sky in equal measure. Those colors play off themselves again, muted, in the hardened face and squared shoulders of the hero. 

“I’ve read that one,” he remarks, craning his head a little because Raylan’s already opened to a favorite passage.

Raylan flips through its yellowed pages, then, more than a little surprised. It's an old one, and hardly what he'd call a classic. It's gas station fare. “What’d you think of it?”

“Well, aside from not committing it to memory…” Tim pauses, stares at the sunbaked face on the cover and gives it some thought. “I don’t know. It was sad?”

Raylan presses a finger to the handsome figure on the front of the book. “He lives.”

“No… it was sad, I’m pretty sure.” 

“His friend dies,” Raylan says, although he has to turn to the back chapters and skim some sparsely-worded paragraphs to be sure. “And the horse. You don’t pick up a book like this and identify with the hero?”

“Like some kind of sociopath?” Tim asks, but his tone belies any uncertainty. Tim’s calling Raylan out, and he’s not being coy about it. 

Raylan grins wide, certain that while Tim ought to be shitting him, he surely is not. And that vague impression of a personality trait, to him, is worth smiling after. “You don’t want to be the hero, you want to be the friend?” 

“I want to be the horse,” Tim says, drawn and slow because Raylan has brought a shovel when all he needs is a gardening spade. Tim’s never seen himself in the shining, favorable light of the hero. He doesn’t know of a thing about him that suggests otherwise. 

“The friend,” Tim thinks aloud, and either he’s wholly sincere or a damn fine actor, because he sounds soft, if a little lost in his vague recollections of the story, “Seems a more attainable goal.”

“And that’s more your style,” Raylan remarks smartly. “Never pressing for anything. You elite Army Ranger types are all the same.”

There’s a compliment secreted into the folds of his observation, so Tim ducks his head, slightly, in appreciation. 

“Shit, that was nothing," he says, not boastfully, but in an effort to keep the joke afloat. He turns it back on Raylan, saying, “Who _doesn’t_ do the first thing that pops into their head at eighteen?” 

Raylan supposes he has a point, there. Leaving Harlan seemed impossible all his life, so much so that he even began sinking further into the earth the more he thought about it. Escape never seemed farther from him than when he was choking on dirt and chemicals down in the mines. But then, at nineteen, he'd done it. Like a sword and accompanying shield, Raylan wielded his college acceptance letter and the money to secure his way, and came out of Harlan embattled and alone, but victorious. He traded both for a badge and a gun, which seemed a fine exchange at the time.

Of course, now he’s right back where he started.

With the exception of the comics and porn, Raylan's collection so far consists of stolen library books. He never even bothered picking off the plastic marker, and most still have their handwritten checkout cards. Tim gets a look at Raylan's handwriting, and decides it’s loopier than he would have expected. 

Under the next shred of plastic comes Richard Adams’ _Watership Down._

“Aw,” Tim says, either in soft recognition for the text or amusement at the scribbled-on cover. There’s an X drawn over the rabbit’s eye, and horns between his ears. 

_“There is nothing that cuts you down to size like coming to some strange and marvelous place where no one even stops to notice that you stare about you,”_ Raylan says, drawing from memory a line of the book and voicing it as easy as he might whistle a familiar tune. “Is a thing I took with me, I think, leaving here.”

Tim looks at him, skeptical. “You telling me people don’t eyeball you everywhere you go?”

“Eyeball me?” Raylan asks, feigning ignorance.

 _Like you don’t know what you look like,_ Tim thinks, but allows only, “Size you up, then."

“If people still do that,” Raylan says, being purposefully coy about it, “I think it’s my responsibility to give ‘em a quick and sure vision.” 

“Well your methods need some work," Tim hums, and it's clear Raylan didn't expect a challenge on what was clearly just a line. But like Raylan's attitude towards clearing any illusions of his character, Tim puts equal importance on his own observations. He's learned how to see situations for all that they are, and more importantly, to read into the actors' motivations, weaknesses, and strengths. Raylan's got marks in every column. 

So Tim says as much as plainly as he knows how: “You really want out of this office? Keep your head down and stop stirring shit up. Do your time, be thankful it ain’t in a jail cell, and go on back to wherever it is you want to be.” 

Tim glances sidelong at Raylan, who looks genuinely surprised by the dressing-down. And of course, Tim can't help but add to it: “Or does your head not bend that way?”

“Humility ain’t my natural state, no.” Raylan doesn't get terse or short with him; one of those traits that exists across the board, Tim thinks, is his confidence. He's not easily wounded by a stern word, though he may bend, slightly, to consider it. “You think I invite all this trouble?”

Tim takes the book from the stack and turns it over to the back cover. “I think you don’t give a shit what I think,” he says with a smile, “So let’s just leave it there.”

As with all their dealings, malice does not enter the picture. It's annoyance come up against prestige, dragging against the edges, even, of fondness. Sometimes the combinations prove volatile, but more often than not, Tim and Raylan are largely agreeable to the other's presence. Nothing between them mixes, and neither man is changed. Raylan supposes he’s just too old for it at this point. Tim thinks he just doesn’t know how. 

"You ever read it?" Raylan asks, though he figures he already has his answer: Tim's turned slightly in favor of the dim light, and his eyes are slowly moving over the text on the book's back cover. 

Raylan’s quick with a selling point he thinks Tim will appreciate: "He had a hard on for Tolkien," he says, because a quest detailed by the wisdom of an imagined language is only so unique. "Go on and tell me you ain't all about that Medieval shit."

"Middle Earth," Tim corrects, eyes still on the text in his hands. “I’m all about that Middle Earth shit.”

 _Rabbits,_ Tim thinks. _I can get into that._

It’s some sort of kindness Raylan does, momentarily leaving Tim to his ponderings. It’s short-lived. 

There’s time enough for Tim to sigh, weary, eyes aching in the dark as he strains to see words he lacks the conviction to understand. He gets no further than the first two lines because, again, Raylan commands an audience. 

He takes up the next book, but keeps it held in his hands, and Tim is unable to see the cover. “You know, I bet you get this all the time--”

“Oh, here it comes, another declaration of undying love.” 

“--but I near about enlisted. Marines.”

“Shit,” Tim says, suddenly grinning. It’s an ugly attempt, but he feels it more than the performance suggests. _“Why?”_

“Why the Marines or why--?”

“Any of it. All of it.” And Tim can't help but try to see the imaginary being Raylan is proposing. The dim light spread between them helps Tim picture Raylan as young, ganglier even than he is now. The darkness smooths out the finer details, draws Raylan's age backwards into time. Tim imagines he's all wry muscle clutching skinny arms and legs like there's nowhere else to go. Tim gets to the crew cut and loses it.

“Boyd,” Raylan starts, but the name alone seems to sour his tongue, and he stops, corrects himself. “He enlisted at nineteen, right as I left for college. I guess it always dogged me, that I hadn’t gone in.” 

_Hadn't gone with him_ is what Raylan means to say. 

“Well,” Tim muses, “If he keeps up the bullshit, you’ll get to go to war with Crowder soon enough.” 

War is it's own entity; no man needs to join an army to find it. The idea of Raylan in the service sticks with Tim, though. Raylan is a man so much his own self, and Tim can't count the thousands of ways the military has changed him. More than a perpetually early riser, Tim is something else entirely, his DNA irrevocably altered. How he sees the world, the ways and means by which his fears manifest, his drive to move on if not _through_ any obstacle--these are things Tim can’t trace past seventeen. The Army gave him a new set of tools, and when he’s faced with a problem his first instinct is no longer keeping his head down. He just shifts a few degrees to the left, lines up his shot. 

Tim wonders if Raylan thinks about changing, himself. It was an appealing notion at that age: all the things he didn't like about himself could have been broken and rebuilt into something different. Tim had that same thought, and seen it all the way through. By its end, there were some lost pieces. Some new ones, some that made him an asset and some that terrified him, others that did both. And there was peace, too: what he couldn't change, he learned long and well after trying, was simply meant to be. 

He could gain strength, lose himself to a cause, dismantle and disregard fear. After all that, anything he couldn't do couldn't be done. 

Genuinely curious, Tim asks, “What stopped you?”

Raylan’s staring someplace adjacent to Tim, though all direction is lost to the blue-black night. He smooths a wrinkle in the arm of his coat, says with mock distraction, “I don’t think it was any one thing.”

Tim sincerely doubts Raylan has an easy answer for anything, let alone this. But Tim wants _an_ answer, at the very least. He takes up the flashlight, shines a beam of light into Raylan's eyes. It's all the interrogation Tim can muster as he challenges, “Sure it was.”

“Honestly? There wouldn’t have been any girls.” 

Thing is, Tim believes that. He catches the gleam of Raylan's playful smile as he lowers the flashlight. Because Raylan's amusement never goes unspoken for, he says, “Didn’t stop you.”

“No, somehow I managed.”

“Must be all that strength of character.”

“Must be.” 

Next is an Octavia Butler novel, but the cover's gone. Tim recognizes the words from the first page-- _ALIVE!_ \--as those that leapt from a friend’s hand to his bedside table. He takes it, curious as to how such a thing found its way into Harlan County. He finds the library ticket pasted in back, and sees that Raylan’s handwritten name is the only one. He doubts there’d be any more even if the book hadn’t disappeared into the hollowed-out heart of a tree.

"Rachel's read this one," Tim supplies before handing it back to Raylan. 

He says it so simply that Raylan forgoes his initial inclination to question Tim's motives for sharing any odd detail. It takes it for truth, plain and simple, so the prodding he starts is more his nature than anything else. "How do you know what Rachel's read?"

"'Cause she gave it to me to read."

"I liked it. She like it?"

"Who do you know that recommends shitty books?”

Raylan considers his battered copy, lost to the heart of a tree. He wouldn’t have figured Rachel for a science fiction aficionado, but _Dawn_ was a worthy exception. He imagines Rachel has one of her own, well-loved and softened. The spine probably splits open to her favorite passages. He means to say, ‘It's really good,’ or something equally noncommittal, but instead he asks, "How well are you two acquainted?"

Tim's eyes narrow just a sliver. It's enough that Raylan catches it and wonders what Tim's focusing on--his comment or the intent that goes with it.

Tim stretches, rolls his neck like this very question has been pent up inside him and he has to exercise just the right muscles to work it out. 

Loosened, he starts: _"Well,”_ he pauses there, gives Raylan a moment to wonder if he's actually onto something before cutting him down to size. “I know the book thing and her bra size, and those naturally came about during introductions. She hasn't otherwise spoken to me in the time I've known her except to say, _Who’s that asshole in the hat?_ " Tim finishes with a twisting little smirk, adds accusingly, "Dick. What are you saying?"

"I'm not saying anything for you to get defensive about."

"You're always saying something."

Raylan digs his heels in, says, "Art tells me you're her protégé."

"If that's what Art tells you," Tim shoots back coolly. He's not displeased with the assessment, only the fact that he gets asked after and talked about.

Raylan keeps on, leaving Tim’s own response unconsidered. "And yet Rachel says you came into your own real quick here. I don't know who to believe." He smiles like he’s made a bigger joke than he has. 

If Tim thinks the line of inquiry ends with his silence, Raylan's ready to tell him he's dead wrong. 

He asks, a natural follow-up, "How long you been at this?"

Tim lets a contemplative noise rattle at the back of his throat. "Mm, ‘bout half an hour now?" Raylan just smiles, salty-sweet. "Oh. I thought you meant putting up with you. Being a Marshal? Just shy of a year. It was Glynco and then here, two weeks out." 

Raylan doesn’t think Tim knows that he is party to quite the accomplishment; not having to shop around for a position is an impressive feat. He doesn’t say so, figuring there's no reason to stroke Tim’s ego.

“Where were you before Glynco?”

“Afghanistan. Haven’t you been paying attention? It’s kinda my thing.” 

Tim knows this is Raylan asking where he’s from, but decides not to give him that. Unlike Raylan’s history in these hills, Tim’s past doesn’t much matter; he's severed ties so well and truly that, even if he was given the _Raylan Givens_ order of punishment, being sent back home wouldn't consume him. He doubts anyone would remember him, or if they did they'd likely think him dead. 

Again--and for the sake of the conversation he'd initially instigated--Tim allows, “Went back to base, got my discharge papers, hung around Georgia a couple weeks until I thought of something to do.” He opens his hands and gestures to encompass the dead fugitive, the chase, the hour, Raylan's books. “This, obviously.”

“Couple of weeks to decide the rest of your life,” Raylan muses. His tone is not so much asking after anything as it is insinuating some greater truth than Raylan suspects Tim knows. 

Tim crushes the notion quick, saying, “I enlisted on a whim. _So.”_ And though he ought to leave the rest for Raylan to gather on his own, Tim thinks there’s a broader point to be made. So he pitches himself forward, angles his arms against his bent knees, and makes his case. “And, _really,_ that’s only true if I get killed doing this. Then it’s _oh, what an idiot. Thoughtless, knocking on the doors to hell.”_ Tim catches Raylan’s eye and sees that he’s bemused by Tim’s tirade. “I stick it out a decade and suddenly it’s a career.” 

“There’s nothing sudden about a decade,” Raylan says lightly. “You’re young, you don’t know that yet.” 

Tim frowns and does a shit job of hiding it. “Alright, Father Time.”

His attitude earns him another look from Raylan, who seems to finally understand what it is he's dealing with: a man with preconceptions against preconceptions. Tim knows how he's thought of, and regardless of whether the shoe fits or not, his chosen defense is to claim compliance, but practice combat. For all his shrugs and idle dismissals, he’s said little more than a handful of dressed-up _no’s._

Raylan tests his theory. "How do you like it? Comparatively."

"I don’t,” Tim says, and Raylan smiles, “Comparatively.”

“Why’d you leave the Army, then?”

"Hostile work environment," Tim drawls.

"Really."

Tim hears the questioning tone, but there's nothing attached to it, nothing to answer for. Raylan's trying--Tim knows this--to get Tim to share his experience, except he knows better than to ask outright. He's only curious, and naturally so; knowing the fated end to a military existence that had very nearly been Raylan's own might temper the strange longing he had for a differently chosen life. He wants to be right in this, by proximity if not example. 

It’s just as well that Tim doesn't explain himself just now, because there were times he'd tried--in bed, in bars, even in the tastefully decorated offices of the department psychologist--and he knows he sounds insane. He can't claim to miss it, doesn't wake every morning wanting for a cot or the hot earth instead of a bed dressed up nice in clean sheets. But the thought inevitably finds him-- _hits him_ \--all blunt force, with neither nostalgia nor affection coloring its edges. 

It's just this: he'd take it all back in an instant. 

Only, the reasons he touches on seem to be lacking: he doesn't like his knees bouncing against the metal beam under his desk when he gets anxious; he can't stand how few routes there are between his apartment and the office; he despises the complacency. The knee thing alone is reason enough to send him packing, given the opportunity. They aren't good reasons, but it's what he keeps coming back to.

“You know what,” Tim decides, the rise to his voice as languid as an evening in July, “I'm not going to tell you. Just ‘cause.”

Raylan huffs a laugh. “Must be serious.” 

Tim doesn't budge, isn't compelled to dissuade Raylan of whatever it is he might be thinking. People like to get person when they think they have a finger on your pain, so Tim's heard it all.

Raylan gives up his waiting game, says, "Well, you hide your disdain brilliantly."

"Thank you. I do try." 

Raylan gets a couple pages into _Dawn_ when he stops, overcome with curiosity.

“You know Rachel's bra size?”

Tim grins a sideways little thing that, in the right light, looks the wrong side of sweet. “We go to the same gym sometimes,” he says. 

“And you carry her bag.”

“I’m the rookie,” Tim says in a tone that belies any shame.

“She told me she wouldn't make me carry her bags.”

“She lied.”

Raylan thinks on it a moment, realizes he'd toted her belongings when the hunt for a fugitive had taken them to sunny California. 

“But enough about me and Rachel and our forbidden romance.” Tim says, then gestures--hands in strict position--at the pile of unearthed books. “You got more to answer for here. This is a _Raylan Givens_ archeological dig.”

“Ain't that a thought,” Raylan drawls. His eyebrows creep upwards but his eyes narrow, and it’s altogether a mystery how he can do both and still look like he’s stepped off some movie set, every inch the handsome hero. “I suppose I feel like Sam Neill.”

“Uh-huh. Keeping with the theme, you should feel like a dinosaur.”

“Well, my knees have me fooled.”

Tim moves so that his back is flush with the boulder behind him. He pushes against it, some, stretching his muscles over the coarse stone, though he doesn’t feel it for the layers of coat, vest, and shirt. He stares straight ahead, gaze pitted against Raylan’s rotting tree. 

“You got a philosophy of your own, how things ought to be?”

“How do you mean?”

Tim shrugs. “Something more concise than God creates dinosaurs. God destroys dinosaurs. God creates man. Man destroys God. Man creates dinosaurs. Dinosaurs eat man. Woman inherits the earth.”

Raylan’s eyebrows drop, knit together. “How many times you seen that movie that you got the whole of it memorized?”

Tim makes a face of some concern, like he thinks Raylan’s never seen through the last two third of the film. “It’s, like, one line.”

Raylan huffs something akin to a laugh, but the joy of it disappears as he considers Tim’s question. Between God and man, creation and destruction, he figures there’s only one thing lacking. 

“The devil ought to make an appearance, I think.”

“Ain’t that a hell of a line,” Tim smirks. The kind, he doesn’t say, that’s best said over the lip of a glass of whiskey. “Speaking of--” He holds up the next in the collection: the Holy Bible. "If this touches the skin mag, which do you think will burst into flames first?" He takes the Bible and the dirty magazine, presses them near like he means to make them kiss.

"That ain't mine," Raylan protests. He says so with a flat finality that immediately draws Tim's attention; it's as close as Raylan's come to being firm in either his questioning of Tim or answering for his own bizarre haul. 

"Funny thing to say, having uncovered your own secret stash."

"That tree is public property," Raylan points out. "Bible isn't mine."

"The porno, though." Tim can only entertain so much nonsense. 

"Oh, yeah. Mine. The lengths I had to go to get it? That thing is going with me to the grave.”

Bible still in his hands, Tim finds cause to challenge-- _hey, it's got your name on it_ \--when he finds an envelope jutting up between the too-thin pages. But Raylan's name and a Miami address are in the top left corner, the sender. Tim's careful about looking, but the letter is gone, anyway.

The stamp is just red ink; Raylan ran it through a machine, something an office might have. Whatever he’d sent, Raylan had not deemed it personal enough to keep off the books. Tim spies the date--2002--and figures it must be when Raylan first settled in Miami, well before his marriage went to shit. 

As for the addressee, well, it’s something that makes so much sense Tim thinks he was born having known it. 

Boyd Crowder.

He sees the envelope for what it is: a bookmark, pinning the criminal Boyd Crowder and Raylan between the delicate pages of the good book. Tim reads about angels and demons, real Old Testament shit he used to think he’d long left behind in his childhood. The words come back to him quick, along with an equally childish gut-deep sense of wrongdoing. 

"Wish I'd stashed more than books in that tree," Raylan laments. "Could go for a drink about now." 

Tim groans a little, in want. It catches Raylan off guard, but pleasantly so; here’s a man with a pulse, after all. 

"No forethought as a teenager, though."

Tim’s lips thin against one another before smacking open into an impressive little O. 

“Public tree, you said?” 

He kicks up off the ground, scoops up his jacket out from under Raylan’s ass, and jogs the distance between the rock and the tree. Echoing Raylan’s own technique, Tim digs his hand into the knot in search of some hidden prize. 

Tim gets near to his shoulder inside the tree before he finds something sunk deep in the wet leaves and growth, something he knows is not of the natural world, and therefore immediately satisfying. 

And whatever Boyd Crowder’s crimes may be, this here is a public service. 

It’s a pickle jar, half-filled with a clear liquid. There’s genuine heft to it, and as Tim turns to show Raylan his find, Raylan has the flashlight ready. The jar captures and holds the light, then seems to grow more and more luminous in their presence.

Raylan's got a sickly-sweet smile on. “I know just the asshole that put it there.”

Tim eyes the jar from all angles, trying to determine its consistency. Any color is lost to them in this light.

"Smells like piss," Tim observes after twisting the jar open and holding it under his nose like he so can't wait to drink it. 

"Could still be moonshine." 

Raylan is confident in his gamble, but he's not making a move for the prize. Tim's lip twists, first in uncertainty, then with gleeful determination. 

"I'll take that bet," he says, and upturns the container for a generous swig. _Things worth doing,_ and all. 

Strangely, Raylan knows a man’s face when he's ingested piss. This isn't that. Tim looks like he's taken a one-two punch as he rears back left, then snaps right. 

"Shit," he gasps, and grins like his teeth are on fire and he needs the cool air to sooth them. He thinks his face has gone pink with shock, so he’s glad for the dark.

“Think I’ll give it a minute,” Raylan says when Tim passes him the jar. There’s a smile on his face, but he’s wary. “See if you go blind, first.”

Tim gestures with two fingers, wanting the moonshine back. “More for me, then.”

He tips back the jar with both hands; it’s an odd shape anyway, but with that first taste running through him, Tim finds he needs the steadying measure. The alcohol runs cold and pools in his empty stomach, leaving Tim with the distinct feeling of drowning within himself. It feels worth it, out here, to touch something familiar. 

"It'll warm you up," Tim says, a smooth invitation. Finally, Raylan accepts. He takes a generous swig, but limits himself to just the one. He doesn't get his lips off the jar before Tim's talking again, his thoughts loosened by the alcohol. 

"Boyd Crowder. That's whose moonshine this is. Bible, too, if you're insisting upon it not being yours.” Tim sways a little, pleased. He knows he's made contact.

Raylan rearranges the jacket on the ground and takes a seat, Tim following after. In the dark, there are no distractions, but still Tim's accusation is not met. In fact, Raylan seems to outright ignore him.

Tim huffs and takes another drink. 

“You’re gonna want to be careful with that,” Raylan says, like the jar in Tim’s hands is as dangerous as any loaded gun. “Or you won’t be fit to ride in the helicopter.”

“I could _fly_ it,” Tim insists, “Shitfaced or not.”

It's his last sip for a time, however. It's through some trial and error that Tim's learned to listen when people tell him outright to take a break. He gets away from himself too often, and most people are too polite to say so. 

In a moment of clarity, Tim circles back to the question Raylan railroaded with silence. "How do you explain it? Crowder’s... selective religiosity, for lack of a better term. _Thou shalt not kill,_ and yet…” 

"I don't claim to know what's in his mind. Or his heart." Raylan turns his quiet answer on his head, putting on a false smile and mirthlessly adding, "Hey. Hearts and minds, ain't that your territory?"

Tim mimics his cheerful tone, says, "Hey, fuck you,” and takes another taste of moonshine before he can think better of so completely giving himself away. 

It's a sore spot, his service. And no matter how casually he puts it on display--a Rangers mug holding his pens, a tattoo he doesn't take pains to obscure--there will always be those who see him for hiding in plain sight, and out of instinct or curiosity, seek to disturb him. 

Tim doesn't think he's being generous placing Raylan neatly in the _curiosity_ column. The man's instincts are all over the place. 

"You're kind of an asshole, sober,” Raylan says. “But you're a funny drunk. I prefer it."

"Well you and I are in agreement on that one." 

Tim wets his lips, tastes the burn of moonshine on cracked, cold flesh. It's as satisfying as it is painful, and Tim has a mind to do it again after his next helping. 

As soon as he recognizes where his own thoughts are leading him, Tim screws the lid back onto the pickle jar and settles it on the ground between himself and Raylan. He needs something in his hands, or it'll be too easy to reach for the jar again. He has a meager list of options: he can take up Crowder’s Bible, or Barnabas Edwards’ hand. 

“You believe in all that?” Raylan asks, as if the way Tim’s fondling the book, turning easily through the pages, reading nothing but recognizing the text hasn’t already answered that for him. He adds, to cover his ass, “In anything?”

“Maybe I’d be a better person if I did,” Tim posits, and continues turning the delicate pages with just the efforts of one long finger. “But I don’t, so I ain’t.”

“Just as well,” Raylan says, and chances one more taste of moonshine. It's a familiar taste, if not necessarily a welcome one. “Doesn’t teach right from wrong, anyway. Just. Good from evil. Even then...”

“Little clumsy,” Tim agrees. “Could have used an editor.”

“Tighten it up.”

Raylan inexplicably laughs at his own line. At first Tim thinks maybe the moonshine has touched him quick, but Raylan's grown up on the stuff, surely. If anything, what's making him loopy is the air trapped among the pages of his secret stash. It's a biological weapon, nostalgia. He's exposed. 

“The guy whose Bible that is?” Raylan says, still pretending like it ain't really Boyd's, “Would crucify me for that.”

“Well, it is a handbook on how to do it,” Tim says, because nothing tastes better with alcohol than blasphemy. “Pretty sure there’s a diagram. In the index.” 

In the quiet that follows, Raylan is inexplicably struck by the need to see for himself that their fugitive is still present. Tim catches Raylan looking and rolls his eyes; there's no forgetting about a dead body when you're the one sat next to it.

“Dead bodies get away from you often?” Tim asks. 

“Just checking.”

Appropriately reprimanded, Raylan sets his sights a little closer to home. 

Tim is a curiosity. He is, in turns, a man with an agenda to succeed in this newly chosen line of work, and a man with so little an ego that he willingly does Raylan’s bidding whenever tasks are nudged his way. Worse, he plays both sides with such minimum distinction, Raylan can never quite tell when he's won. 

There’s plenty to puzzle out of Tim’s teflon exterior, and whether it’s worth the few hours’ wait they're still in for isn’t the point; Raylan just likes pressing into things, applying a little too much weight and sizing up the response. It’s how he maneuvers through the world, always has. One dead-eyed young man isn’t going to edge him off his game. 

Tim feels this as surely as though Raylan has laid it out for him, drawn a map as to how he’ll see it done. Tim squares his shoulders some, knowing he’s at a disadvantage out here on Raylan’s turf. There’s no office tedium or deadly shootout to serve as distractions, and the stack of books is dwindling. 

He thinks whether or not his best bet is simply to go back to sleep like he wants to. Or drink. But if the idea is not to show a shred of vulnerability, an expression of helplessness touched by exhaustion and inhibition may not achieve his goals. 

He rubs the side of his face with one hand, regardless, and it’s as telling as any gaping-mouthed yawn. If he gets it now, or in the helo, or in his own bed, sleep will be a fitful reward for the last forty-eight hours. 

_Christ, I’m tired._

The thought makes Tim smile, because it can’t be helped. He doesn’t feel it to be so in any other respect beyond his appearance and _this_ , but here's the truth: he has returned to civilian life. His tiredness and what little sleep he carved out of the past hour in service to it are on par with his civilian clothes, his civilian hair, and his civilian sensibilities. Only his recognition of the transition seems to have been lagging--he’s been out almost sixteen months. 

“What’s funny about it?” Raylan asks, because his read on Tim as it stands--however brief--tells him that no matter how rundown he must feel, he hasn’t lost his focus. Whatever’s got him smiling can be found in the neat folds of the task at hand. 

“Oh,” Tim hums, “Nothing much. One of those… you walk all night and end up thinking you’ve actually come a long way. Sort of. Moments.” 

Raylan grins toothily at Tim’s obvious discomfort at being made to explain himself, and then failing so spectacularly. “Well hell. You actually answered me. I’m shocked.”

“Did I,” Tim says, and he is revisited by a distressingly common thought: _I drink too goddamn much._ His hand flexes hungrily for the pickle jar all the same. 

He settles for tracing an index finger along the rim of the lid. Slowly, with this effort and the spin of the earth, the jar will be opened by providence. 

“You did indeed,” Raylan smirks. "And to think, the fellas in the office call you cagey to the point of belligerence."

“Why don’t you point out these fellas sometime, and we'll all discuss the merits of belligerence.” 

Tim speaks with no overt threat, but he's made a decidedly sharp U-turn towards the violence he missed having happened upon their man in such a state that precluded Tim from doing his job. 

Raylan, feeling he's along for the ride, shares his conclusions: “There’s no cause for a bad attitude. You caught the guy.”

“I stumbled across his lifeless corpse.”

“You tap him yet, call dibs? ‘Cause otherwise, he’s still up for grabs.” Raylan holds out a hand like he means to beat Tim to it. Tim bets Raylan won't get after a dead body just to sink a joke, and he’s proven right.

Tim nods towards the remaining books in Raylan's pile. “What’s that one?” Tim asks, but Raylan ignores him.

"There'll be others," he says, an assurance. His voice is a slow, rough drag against the quiet. Tim imagines how he sounds out here is the kind of voice that ought not escape the bedroom. It's all the whiskers along his jaw against soft flesh of an open thigh. It's too tender, considering what he's saying. "There always are."

Tim makes a face, like he really isn't sure Raylan can hear himself when he talks, and ain't that a shame? "Are you consoling me over a missed opportunity... Or a _missed opportunity?"_

"Murderers don't seem your type."

Tim dismisses his own advice, and finally starts to really feel the ill-gotten warmth of the moonshine. Where any lesser spirit would settle low in his belly, Tim feels the few sips he's had buzzing towards the tips of his fingers, the ends of his eyelashes. 

"Way to let me down easy,” he says with a wry grin.

"I'm a killer, not a murderer." Raylan sounds sure in what he's saying, and Tim does not doubt he's said it all before. "Yourself, too." 

Tim gives a dismissive shrug, as if the distinction is unnecessary. "I don't blanket myself in semantics.”

 _"Soldier,"_ Raylan says, cool but with all the ferocity of a hatchet swung wildly at its target, "Is as semantic as it gets."

Tim serves him a well-met stare. Raylan’s a lot of things, but subtle ain’t one of them. 

"I mean, if I had to check a box…” Tim leaves the rest for Raylan to figure. 

It’s absurd that Raylan is finding chance after chance to needle Tim when sat on the ground between them is the man’s own _childhood,_ preserved in plastic. It’s got none of the punch of a severed human head, but Tim thinks it’s a part of him, all the same. So again he asks, "What's that one?" 

The next book in the pile isn’t like the rest; it’s something older, though _stolen_ is still in the running. Tim rather likes that, above all else, larceny is a theme with Raylan. 

“This was Arlo’s,” Raylan says, unknowingly proving Tim’s point. “I never read it. But it was a favorite of his, and I didn’t think he deserved it.” Raylan’s grinning while he explains this, the foolishness and resolution of his decision still with him. 

“Shit,” Tim says, and physically draws back like he doesn’t want any part of Raylan’s mischief. They both see this, and Tim is rightly forced to answer for it. “Different strokes, I guess. I never so much as looked my father in the eye. If he got wind that I’d stolen from him?” 

He repeats, and Raylan joins him this time: _“Shit.”_ They can both picture their respective punishments, though neither flinches at the thought.

Raylan stares at the paperback and they don’t say anything for a time. Tim’s seen the kind of wrath Arlo exacts on his son--a slap to the face for an unkind word, to start. A trigger pulled. And then there’s everything else in Raylan that Arlo’s put there: anger and vengeance and that same punishing nature. There’s a sense of justice that runs bone-deep in Raylan, too, that in some backwards way is Arlo’s doing. Tim doesn’t speak to any of this, let alone ask for confirmation. There’s enough of Raylan bared in the small findings before them, pulled from the heart of an old tree. 

Anymore, Tim thinks, would be downright gratuitous. 

It's Tim's own sense of fairness--Raylan doesn't really have one of those--that gets him speaking again, putting his lot in with Raylan's over the tiny cache of stolen goods. The moonshine helps, too. 

“In the Gutterson household,” Tim gives the term an air of nobility against which the name itself seems to rebel, “Vulnerability was not permitted. You’d get the tear smacked outta your eye fast as you could muster up the moisture to have one.” He smiles--a sharp flash of teeth, like Raylan had done--and finds he has to laugh at himself, saying, “I did that thing--you’re crying or whatever, and you wipe all the tears and snot straight back into your hair. Looks like sweat. As if a sweaty little kid is normal.” 

“What were you crying for?” 

Raylan asks after a particular instance because it seems obvious to him that Tim’s drawing from one. Or else he just sees the impossibility of Tim losing his cool as a generalized idea; it can only exist as a rare, singular occurrence. The exception that proves the rule.

“Uh,” Tim starts, and his mouth twists, cutting off whatever else he means to say. He has the look of a man who doesn't want to cop to his own ugly truth, but there's no way around it, now, when the build up has been so gradual. To divert now would be to gin up further intrigue and ultimately damn himself to whatever Raylan thought to be the answer himself, whether it was real or imagined.

When Tim realized his father hated him--admittedly something he denied until the notion itself lost its command of pain, but drove at him a sense of bleak understanding--he did not cry. It numbed all the rest of the shit, made sense of his father’s twinned turns of lashing out and neglect.

Tim leans his head back against the boulder, like he’s got to think on that one.

“He killed my dog,” Tim decides, though for as careful as he is telling truths, he realizes he's already told a lie. “Well, not my dog. _A_ dog. A stray that came around sometimes, liked me.” 

Tim was sure of that much, because he’d never chanced feeding her. And yet, the beautiful beagle with soulful eyes had taken to wandering in her old age, and often found Tim in her travels. 

“I had her in my bedroom. He found her.”

Tim stopped short on explaining how the deed was done. He supposed he wasn't so sure on that, himself. There was blood, but not enough to suggest his father had slit her throat open. Nothing about the disturbance of his room, however, suggested she'd gone gently. Tim remembered that she had a white face that made her look owlish and old. Someone's pet, once upon a time--or else she would have been more wary of people. 

Tim remembered, too, having nightmares that she’d come specifically to his house to die. Later, in his nihilist teen years, he’d decided that was a shitty thing to do. 

Skipping past what he doesn't know, Tim continues, “Wrapped her in my Spider-man bed sheets. Didn't move her right away, though. He was still in the house. I hid her under the bed, like--he didn't know what he'd done? Or wouldn't smell dead dog if he walked by my room? Stupid shit kids do, I guess. I didn't get her outside until the next morning."

Tim smiles as he speaks, a broken giddy one, like there is cause to find humor in the act, now, decades later. 

“So. That why you hated him?”

Raylan has the gall to sound uncertain, and Tim wants to ask what it is about his traumatic childhood memory that Raylan finds so lacking that he must seek confirmation. Yet, with those very words on his tongue, Tim hears himself falter. 

“Uh, it didn’t help.”

It had been horrifying, and perhaps the last time he’d cried, but for Tim the event signaled all that was to come: the fear he lived with in that house, as real and as visceral as if it had taken a physical form so as to back every one of his father’s plays for power and dominance in the home. An entity, then, that needed killing as surely as his father did. 

And as easily as the moonshine passed over his tongue and settled itself inside, Tim hears alcohol-saturated words making the same journey out into the world: “I think I hated him more ‘cause he knew me. Knew what I was thinking.”

If the tight line of his mouth is anything to go by, Raylan accepts this explanation. 

“People don't,” he says, a piece of too-late opposition towards all the doubt felt when someone claims to see a man clearly. “But it's one hell of a threat.” 

_I've been there,_ is what he doesn't say. _I know._

Instead of that--because contrary to popular belief, Raylan knows when to leave well enough alone--he says, “I’m kind of surprised you’re telling me all this.”

Tim's stretching his arms above his head, popping a few knuckles when his hands meet. He shrugs into the gesture. It's so wholly innocent--his expression--that Raylan is forced to reckon with the possibility that Tim is lying through his teeth. Who, when gifted with the ability to appear as though he wasn’t, wouldn’t hide himself all the time?

“I feel you’re due. I know all kinds of shit about your father. Almost as much shit as I know about you."

"Almost," Raylan echoes. "How's that faring? We about neck and neck?"

"Well now, he gets to talking when he's drunk, that's for damn sure." At Raylan’s blank stare, Tim elaborates: "You know I can go to that veterans bar, like, whenever. Not just when you and Art need a chaperone."

Raylan stills, and it’s as though he’s turned on Tim without moving to do so. It’s an eerie trick, and the result has got Tim feeling surrounded. 

"You want to be careful as to who it is you put in with.” Raylan speaks with a cool familiarity, as though he’s dug up _these_ words and _that_ tone up from the frozen earth around them. He sounds--native.

"Think I'm gonna fall in with a bad crowd, Raylan?"

"For your own good, Tim. Don't test me on this."

Tim doesn't give him the explanation that would calm things: that he only goes when he's been dragged out to Harlan by some sideways means of Raylan's, and even then, he doesn't order bullshit with his whiskey. If he takes up Arlo's company, it's in service to a cause: reconnaissance. There's nothing quite like making a drinking buddy of a career criminal. Tim catches the names of a few acquaintances and files them away for later use. 

Admittedly, Arlo’s never boring. His stories aren't Tim's, and having only lived his own Tim can appreciate that. Tim can say the same for Raylan. 

"You ever fight him?” Raylan asks, and quick as shot, they're not talking about Arlo anymore. 

“My father?” Tim says. He seeks confirmation, but doesn’t answer right away. His tone is light and joking when he does. “I don’t know how to fight.”

“They teach you to fight in the Army,” Raylan scoffs.

“They teach you to kill,” Tim shoots back, “Which you’d know, if you’d followed Boyd Crowder and your heart, and become a dumbfuck Marine.”

Raylan shakes his head; he's already regretting having shared that particular detail with Tim. Still, he holds the distinct belief that whatever Tim has to say about it, he'll do so here, and not bring anything imparted under a blackened Harlan sky back into the world they inhabit. “So, if Barnabas here had cornered you with boxing gloves?”

“Oh, I’d be a goner for sure,” Tim grins, and _keeps grinning_ well into his genuine answer. “Nope. He never did hit me.”

“Huh,” Raylan says, genuinely surprised. “You’ve got such a punchable face.”

“You know, that’s a look I strive for.”

“I mean, it’s uncanny.”

Tim draws a circle around his face with in index finger. “All natural,” he boasts. “Anyway. He died before I finished Basic, so.”

“Lucked out,” Raylan says, and watches Tim shrug. 

"I know you fought Arlo."

"He tell you that?" Raylan asks pointedly. "He must be senile with old age. No. For some reason that escapes me now, I never did fight back."

Tim's quiet for a time and Raylan can feel his intent stare burning hot against the side of his face, though he never deigns to meet it. “How'd he scare you so much?”

“I used to think he knew me, too. I didn't want to think that we were anything alike.” 

It’s a strange thing to admit to a man he hasn’t known but for a few months, and Raylan doesn’t think he’s said as much to Winona in all their years of marriage. He gives it up to the dark, the hills, the dead body in their company. His secrets aren’t leaving this place. 

Raylan starts to return the scattered books into their pile centered on his square of plastic tarp. He’s letting Tim know they’re done with this game. 

Tim doesn’t fight it. He stares straight ahead, at the tree and the blue-black-painted hills, all the while wondering how it is they played each other this far. They sit side-by-side at work, with only a slim partition to shield against one another's bored sighs, soft murmurings--it's Raylan, mostly, who talks to himself--but this is different. Out here, they're hardly any closer, but the empty atmosphere draws their breaths together, pulls their heartbeats into tandem.

He fends off a yawn, checks his watch. Raylan’s got the flashlight and is dragging it up and down his stack of options. 

"Give me the rabbit one, huh?"

"I'm reading it," Raylan says, and throws a beam of light into Tim’s face. 

“You’ve already read it,” Tim argues. “Read the Bible, heathen.”

Instead, Raylan gifts Tim the romance novel. “Here. See what all the fuss is about."

“Asshole,” Tim says. The bite is gone from his voice, but as the sentiment stands, Raylan can't keep himself quiet. 

“I'm the asshole?”

“With some frequency, yes.” 

Because Raylan is fair with his share of the light--though nothing near generous--Tim does manage to read for a while. The narrative is simple enough, but still a far cry from what normally holds Tim's attention. There are bodies--abs that ripple, bosoms that heave--and heat and _chemistry,_ whatever that is. In Tim's opinion, there's more sense to be made of the magical realism he devours. That thought keeps him company as Tim slowly nods off, then loses himself completely to sleep.

Raylan doesn't mind it. He likes the silence even among company. There was once a time--in this very spot, no less, because ever since coming back to Harlan nothing is done by halves--where he could be sat next to Boyd Crowder, and the man would never utter a word. 

Truly, it was a place like no other.

He closes his book and takes a moment to stare out as far as he can see in the waning darkness. He loses time--minutes? Hours? It slips through his fingers and, finally, he knows what it means to be back here again. 

It occurs to him he's never seen the sun come up from this vantage point, only the day curl against the horizon and dip lowly into night. So Raylan watches the sun creep come up over Harlan, and decides he wasn't missing anything. He doesn’t even think the cold, fog, and cloud cover are at fault. There’s just nothing to see, here.

A shadow drapes itself half-across Barnabas Edwards’ face, but it shouldn’t be, given the position of the sun. 

Tim wakes with a start. He finds Raylan’s gaze--and hand--on him, and jerks away. 

The sky and earth are brighter, lighter shades of blue and green. Tim sees both only in broad strokes; he cannot yet focus his senses.

“You spook easy?” Raylan seems unfazed. The offending hand still hangs in the air where Tim's shoulder had been. 

“Did you touch me?” Tim's accusation is sharp and quick-- _instinctive,_ Raylan thinks. 

“Just--moved you. You were drooping mighty close to our man, here.”

He stops short of heading up Tim’s apology for him, let alone issuing his own statement of thanks. 

The way Raylan looks at him, then--with this studious, cool gaze--has Tim sinking into himself. It's the kind of thoughtful, considering look of Tim does not like being on the receiving end of, and his only saving grace is that it hangs from the face of a man too self-contained to name it out loud.

Maybe he's being kind. Maybe he just doesn't want to know. All the same, Raylan draws from some similar vein of respect, one they share, one that works overtime not to be known and, if not that, then to be forgiven. Raylan spares Tim, willfully forgets what it is he's thinking, and turns his attention to the open book on his lap.

Suddenly, Tim stands.

"That's a _fucking horse."_

Raylan follows his intent stare and, sure enough, there's a mare peaceably grazing along a small foothill. She’s dark, sake for a white-speckled face that leaves Raylan with visions of death masks. It could have only just happened upon them, but it is just as possible that it's been near--for hours, now--under the cover of darkness.

"This is Kentucky,” Raylan allows. He glances back at Tim, who seems genuinely captivated by the sight. Raylan gives it another shot.

And _sure,_ he thinks. Objectively, it's something. The creature is unmistakably majestic, its very form given to strength and fortitude. Raylan isn't one to assume a thing is a nuisance simply because they have some number to their ranks and choose to roam. 

"Think it's wild?" Tim’s voice is no longer sleep-snared and drawn; it’s exact and proof enough that’s he’s back in his own head, aware of himself. 

"Probably abandoned." 

Pale yellow light breaks over the hills, a quiet revelation. The light doesn't cut through the dark so much as it touches the dark, turns it slowly over to its side. The frost-covered ground begins to shine and blink awake, and it's as if their empty surroundings have come alive. Tim steals a glance at Barnabas Edwards just to be safe.

The mare trots away, never having once given her audience any mind.

Tim sinks back down to the earth, back dragging against the boulder to produce a slow, grating sound. It greets his own ears like a snore. 

He again tries to make sense of his exhaustion. The sensation struck him first upon finding their fugitive, and only seemed to pool and fill him up as the night wore on. Raylan only adds to it, but he's hardly the defining factor. Tim thinks this is the first time he's truly failed in this job, but there don't seem to be any consequences. He's run ragged by the mental gymnastics it takes to understand that particular paradox. 

In the end, he just closes his eyes to it. 

"You really wanted to be the one to shoot him?" Raylan asks, picking up a lot of what Tim isn't saying. 

"I wanted to try."

"I thought you didn't miss.”

Tim peeks an eye open. "I don't. But _try_ sounds less homicidal.”

“Suppose it does,” Raylan smirks. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

Tim realizes after the fact that he's not sure who Raylan was asking after--Barnabas Edwards or his father. 

Tim doesn’t often deal in regret; if he did, it’d fast consume him. After the fact, he doesn’t think twice about talking, tired and loose, with Raylan. Some new villain will command Raylan's attention, figure itself inextricably into his life somehow, and Raylan will throw aside all Tim's told him that's past. Tim thinks it's to do with the hat--Raylan can only see what it is that's in front of him.

He thinks that’s a pleasantly simple way to live, and feels a pang of jealousy that Raylan's commandeered the lifestyle for himself, and to such abundance. He is his genuine self, and people are expected to understand him, and not the other way around. 

At least, that was Tim's impression before tonight. He saw a man who went his own way, and those who follow were merely drawn, open-mouthed, gawking and in awe. Yesterday's Raylan had a charm about him, the confidence and skills, each feeding into the other. He was an entire ecosystem of self-propagated heroics, an entity unto and for itself. 

And then he'd gone and fished a part of himself out of a tree in the middle of nowhere, unfolded it from plastic tarp and set about exploring the contents. 

_Who does that?_

Tim lifts a hand to his head and jostles the cap he’s forgotten he’s wearing. He tugs it off to sweep back his hair, which is cool to the touch and still a little sweat-damp. He’s long overdue already, but Tim gives it another six hours before he’ll be home, taking a shower. 

“You want to keep it, finish it?” Raylan nods toward the romance novel discarded at Tim’s side, a blade of grass marking the spot he stopped reading. 

“Well, there ain’t a gun to my head, so no.”

But Raylan’s already wrapped the other books in their plastic tarp, leaving the romance novel in Tim’s possession. If he doesn't take it, he's damning it to a short and soggy existence at the foot of the boulder. With a sigh, Tim stuffs it into his jacket pocket. He watches Raylan knot the tarp together and return the bundle to its hiding place. Neither man questions his intentions; it just seems right. While Raylan’s back is turned, Tim takes a last swig of moonshine. 

Tim’s got a clearer look at the crude etching on the boulder now that Raylan’s left his place. He traces the testicles with his index finger and notices the less-defined efforts to draw hairs. 

“You gonna explain the dick to me?”

“Tim, if you haven’t figured out what it’s there for by now, someone has failed you terribly.” 

“You have dick-rock hieroglyphics for a landmark. There's more questions than answers in its description alone.”

Raylan stands ahead of Tim, hands on his narrow hips, jaw drawn at just the right angle to catch the weak sunlight. When he sighs, it’s a breath of pink air and then the white bite of a smile. 

He takes a knee beside Tim, who stands as if to supervise Raylan’s efforts. Raylan tears away at the tall grass crowding the rock. It’s only when he comes away with two great handfuls of shredded grass that the complete message is revealed: 

_YOU’RE A 8=== >  
RAYLAN GIVENS_

Tim grins wide--chapped, cracking lips be damned. This is, without a doubt, the greatest thing he's seen in recent years. For once, alcohol isn’t to blame for the warmth blooming in his chest; it's _this,_ a vision of unfettered joy. 

“It’s like finally uncovering civilization in Harlan County,” he marvels, then pulls out his cell phone and snaps a picture of Raylan, still crouched low by this enlightening estimate of his character. Raylan comes to stand beside him and can’t help but shake his head at the sight. 

“Spurned lover?” Tim asks. The Bible and moonshine come to mind and he blurts out, “Or Boyd Crowder?”

When Raylan doesn’t answer, but only continues to smile fondly at the derogatory message, Tim adds, “Suppose they’re one in the same.” 

Then he watches as Raylan remains wholly, inexplicably unfazed. 

“Suppose,” Raylan drawls, then tips his hat back slightly to show, if not his face, then the fact that he does not feel inclined to hide it. He gets Tim under that same considering stare that so unnerved Tim, earlier, but doesn’t draw so much as a flinch, now. “You don’t seem surprised.” 

“Hillbilly crime family romance? It’s the oldest story there is.” Tim looks at the etching when he says so. While hardly the most profound sentiment he's ever seen commanded into stone, it doesn't lack heart. The deep lines were made to last, an indication of effort, if not sincerity. “Nice imagery, too. All that time spent down a hole together.” 

"A mine shaft, of all things." Raylan's heard the jokes, too. Made some himself.

"Digging for coal..." 

“You know I’m kidding,” Raylan says. His voice is still light, drawn from a place of indelible confidence. 

Tim doesn’t waver for a second.

“I know you’d say so.”

He smiles. After a beat, Raylan returns the favor with one of his own. It’s a sly little number that dovetails into his next line, another bit of deflection towards the etched message. 

“Could just as well claim you wrote it, sat here long as you were.” 

“Better that than the truth--I was sleeping on the job.” 

Tim scoops up his jacket and shakes off the wet grass. 

"Never actually ridden in a helicopter,” Raylan says. Now that sunlight has broken into the sky, touched gold to blue and awoken the day, he feels more anticipatory of their recovery. At least by now, they have a chance of being seen. “Got any tips?”

“Hold onto your hat. Air’s gonna take it straight up and in, blades’ll cut it to ribbons.” Tim swipes again at errant bits of grass stuck to the jacket. “Saw it happen to a guy’s foot once. ‘Course, the foot was previously severed from the body… on its own, though, about the size of a hat.” 

He spreads his hands open for an imaginary foot, guessing along half-sizes.

Raylan stares at him a moment, confounded. Nothing in all the night’s conversation with Tim came as effortlessly as that. Every other word was like pulling teeth, save for this, a gruesome encounter remarked upon frankly, easily, _candidly._

“Really, now,” Raylan says, “Why’d you leave the military?”

Tim smiles because he gets the joke. "It's nothing like you're thinking."

"Tell me, what am I thinking?" 

There’s no mistaking the challenge in his voice, no matter how cool and level he keeps it. Tim gets the distinct feeling Raylan does not mean to leave this night empty handed. 

"One of two things, and I ain't answering you for neither." 

"Well now I got to hear it." Raylan moves to lean against the boulder. His hands have gone been drawn and crossed over his chest, but he lets one escape, palm up. “We literally unearthed a heap of my life’s bullshit. Am I not owed the same courtesy?”

“You want to take a shovel and start plundering the ground for my skeletons, feel free.”

“You’re gonna make me guess,” Raylan warns. “I may not be so kind.” 

“Raylan, I’m not looking to you for kindness.” The gaze Tim meets Raylan with is unlike anything Raylan's felt thrown his way--on this night, or any other. It's strong enough to withstand the sharp cut of the words that go with it, but when paired with the light touch of a smile, seems wholly inoffensive. 

Then--because he's thrown Raylan for one loop, so why not another?--Tim gives up, gives in, and rattles off what he sees taking shape at the top of Raylan’s head: "You're either thinking... I got disillusioned. That's awfully romantic, ain't it? Couldn't see a purpose or an end to what I was doing, couldn’t stomach what I’d already done, that kind of thing. Well, no. If I needed a purpose or an end to things, I wouldn't be much of an alcoholic, now would I?"

"Staring into the oblivion," Raylan agrees, ignoring the sass Tim tacked on to the end, there. "It crossed my mind. And the second?" 

"The second," Tim says, "Is decidedly less romantic. You think they rooted me out for being queer."

Raylan keeps himself--his smile--level and sure. "And that's not the case?"

"Oh, hell no, they had no idea the depths to which I am a raging homosexual." 

It's said with so straight a face, Raylan doesn't think Tim puts air into the words to get them out. They just appear, ready. 

“You told me you weren’t going to tell me,” Raylan surmises, “So, I concede it. You weren’t a disillusioned soul with wandering eyes.”

“Sounds great, the way you say it,” Tim says, easy and like he means to reconsider things, as if that life isn't already lost to him. “Truth is? A few too many tours in, I got to looking around... I didn't see any of my buddies. They were either dead or out.” Tim doesn't seem to draw a distinction between either outcome, nor does he have an elegant means of naming the feeling of finding himself alone. “It sucked. Kind of like gettin’ to _Eagle Scout_ when everyone knew it was lame and bailed at _Tenderfoot.”_ Satisfied with his great reveal, Tim concludes, “That’s about it.”

Raylan narrows his eyes. "Really, though.”

Tim gives an entirely innocent shrug of his shoulders; maybe he’s bared his heart, maybe he’s waded knee-deep into some bullshit. "What makes anybody leave a thing like that? I'm a compulsive masterbator, and saving the free world was really cutting into my me-time."

“I'd sooner believe that than accept that you called anyone friend.”

“Well here comes one now.” 

Raylan pauses, listens, hears it too. The whirring sound comes eerily close to his ear, despite the fact that he knows it’s way off in the distance. Raylan eyes the top of the boulder, their only vantage point. 

“Should I signal for it?” he asks.

“If you want to get your head taken clean off,” Tim says. “Sit tight. I got a flare if they pass us completely.” 

“Where are you keeping a flare?”

Tim rolls his eyes. Raylan’s not off the mark wanting to signal the helicopter, though, so once again he scales the rock, bringing with him the slicker bearing the Marshal’s logo and a small rock. He spreads out the former on top--bright yellow letters clear enough to read from above--and holds it in place with the rock. He drops down again. 

No sooner do his boots hit the ground, the helicopter climbs into view from over the hills. It’s bright orange with a blue racing stripe down the nose, a callback to the era it came from as a former news copter. It's nothing like Tim's used to, save for the bones of the thing. Bought for a song at a police auction, Tim's only heard tales of its smooth ride, never once taking up his friend on an offer to fly.

The helicopter itself satisfies Raylan's sudden desire to see this little vision of Harlan swept up and shaken. Finally, the air around them doesn't feel so suffocating. 

With a broad choice of where to land, the helicopter settles for a flattened bit of valley a couple hundred feet east of Tim and Raylan. Its blades cut through the early morning light and scatter it, like a fishing line breaking the calm of a pond. A quick glance from Tim confirms that Raylan's taken his advice: he's got a hand secured firmly atop his hat. 

The rotating blades soon slow, and though a fella with the coroner's office steps out with a stretcher fit under one arm like a surfboard--hardly a sight worth overlooking--neither Deputy can tear their attention from the pilot. The sixty-year-old Mackie is wearing a full flight suit and an ever-present straw hat. He's grinning like a madman, waving wildly at the pair. 

Tim waves back. 

“Shit,” Raylan says, impressed. “What'd this guy do for a living?”

“Not much for moneymaking in public service,” Tim agrees dryly. “Anyway, don't ask. He won a lawsuit after losing a nut post-heart surgery.”

Raylan's eyebrows climb towards the brim of his hat. “I'm gonna need that whole story,” he says.

“Sure as shit wasn’t supposed to happen, is about the whole of it.”

“It just--?”

“Rolled down his pants leg,” Tim says, meandering and ominous. He jogs ahead and meets Mackie with a swinging handshake. Their mirrored movements speak a long friendship Tim surely hasn’t had the time to cultivate. 

Though, Raylan doesn’t suppose a sexagenarian is in the market for anything less than fast friendships.

“You said you looked like a stud flying this thing,” Tim grins as Raylan joins at his side. “I didn't want to believe it.”

“God’s honest truth,” Mackie says with a smile that boasts a sliver of space between his two front teeth. 

Raylan doesn't follow the rest of their conversation. Instead, he circles back to the boulder and aids the coroner in loading and transporting the body onto the stretcher. He gets a fair warning for his trouble-- _Marshal, you should really wear gloves_ \--but more than any squeamishness towards the deceased, he feels a thrumming need to quicken their departure. 

He's eager to see this place from a distance. It's something, he thinks, that's different from distancing himself from it. 

And when he gets his wish, Raylan is a touch disappointed. The rock and rotting tree don't look like much, hardly the sanctuary he'd once believed them to be. And it's all Harlan, still. No matter what he'd once thought about it. 

When they get up in the air and level off high above the trees--they’ve got to be generous with their tethered cargo--Raylan thinks Tim will be quick to doze off. 

He isn’t--and for the duration of the flight he doesn’t--but his relaxed posture and ease with which he handles the few rocky turns make him a perfect candidate. 

It’s a rowdier ride than Raylan expects, but he supposes that’s part of the fun. All the same, he doesn’t envy the coroner, who feels compelled to draw out of the helicopter’s middle every time they go low, angling to ensure nothing has ensnared Barnabas Edwards. 

Light has heaved itself above all when they finally land, and it’s brought with it some generous additions: flashing blue and red atop the local sheriff’s car color the empty lot. Most others from the search--locals and Marshal Service alike--have long gone. Six hours ago there wouldn’t have been room enough to park a bike in the lot, let alone a helicopter. 

Those last few stragglers back away all the same until the rotating blades moan, dip, and settle into position. 

Raylan unclips his seat belt, presses _Watership Down_ against Tim's middle as he moves to exit first. 

“You’ve earned it.”

Tim doesn’t get a chance to reply. They're fast met by Art, who gives Tim a curious look.

“You always bring a book to a manhunt?”

Tim produces the romance novel from his pocket with his free hand. 

“I bring two,” he says. 

Raylan, with his hat tipped low over his face, passes them both by. “Gotta have something to do after he gets the guy.”

It's as much a commendation as Raylan himself is fit to bestow. He circles around Art, makes his way to Art’s vehicle and sets about rummaging until he comes away with a bottled water. He draws a generous drink, takes his time. 

“Saw on a map here how far you’d gone out. Well beyond the search grid,” Art says.

“Raylan was familiar with the area.” 

Art nods, considers what Raylan’s involvement usually means--trouble. “There anything out that way Mr. Edwards could have been running towards?”

As much as Tim would like to _personally_ present to Art that etched estimate of Raylan’s character, he keeps mum. Art’s mind is working towards the obvious, that the criminal enterprises in Harlan County have expanded, ballooned out into the country, plowed over hills and sunk their grip into the earth itself. 

Tim didn’t see any sign of that in his search. He supposes even if he had, well… He’d have to consider it. 

It’s nothing he’s heard that makes Tim want to keep Raylan’s secret, and Raylan never did ask him as much. He thinks if the place isn’t touched again, the books and moonshine might even keep another twenty years. 

Tim finds he likes that idea just a little too much.

“Nope,” he assures his boss, “Just running from us.”


End file.
